Killer in 1977 Alamance murder to be paroled in 2 years

Isaac Groves Times-News @TNIGroves

Wednesday

Oct 10, 2018 at 8:13 PM

Thomas Gordon White, 63, who was convicted of one of the most notorious murders in Alamance County in the late 1970s when he was 23, and a prison break 10 years later, will be released on parole in two years.

White’s victim, Horace Mitchell Payne, 53, was an Alamance County native living in Greensboro at the time. He had been missing for more than a week when his body was found June 9, 1977, about a mile into the woods behind his mother’s house on Cedar Cliff Church Road in southern Alamance County. His Pontiac had been found four days earlier partially submerged in the Haw River near Austin Quarter Road.

The case took some bizarre turns, including suspicions of witchcraft because of what turned out to be a rabbit snare — originally thought to be a cross — and a circle on the ground of the camp-site murder scene that turned out to have been made by tent anchors.

It was more than a year before White, formerly of Snow Camp, was charged in August 1978. He was convicted of second-degree murder in January 1979 and sentenced to life in prison plus one year, but is eligible for parole because he was convicted before 1994, when parole was eliminated in North Carolina.

White’s co-defendant was a 15-year-old girl who wasn’t identified because she was a juvenile, but police said was “really more dangerous than he was,” and apparently the one to instigate the murder. Her sentence ended around 1984.

White was convicted also of robbing a woman in Orange County about a month before Payne’s murder, and a 1986 prison break in which White climbed the fence of the minimum-security Alamance County Prison Unit a couple of months after being transferred there. He was captured without incident about six hours later in a Mebane hotel about five miles from the prison. He was with a woman, not his co-defendant, who investigators said believed White had permission to be out. Both contacted the prison that night to say White would be back in the morning. Department of Corrections fugitive-retrieval personnel chose not to wait.

Reporter Isaac Groves can be reached at igroves@thetimesnews.com or 336-506-3045. Follow him on Twitter at @tnigroves.

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